Hackers create havoc among the voters just before the French Presidential elections

Few days back, before the presidential election in France, approximately nine gigabytes of hacked data related to centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron was published on Pastebin.

If this was not then unknown user disposed off the data mixed with a collection of fake documents in order to create havoc among the voters before elections.

“The En Marche! Movement has been the victim of a massive and co-ordinate hack this evening which has given rise to the diffusion on social media of internal information. The seriousness of this event is certain and we shall not tolerate that the vital interests of democracy be put at risk.-said Regarding all the fuzz that was created by a hacker, a representative for Macron’s political movement En Marche.

The data was released late on Friday night at 2 p.m. ET, around four hours before the election campaign period officially closed with its restrictions on campaigning, reporting and polling. The leaks took place at the eleventh hour of the campaign; similar to presidential campaign of US. The ban is due to stay in place until the last polling stations close Sunday at 8 p.m.

However, as a precautionary measure, the French presidential election commission announced that the media should be cautious while publishing specific details about the hacked emails. They warned that publishing of information will possibly lead to criminal charges. The committee is expected to meet on Saturday for discussions about the hacked data.

The interesting fact here is that the email hack is suspiciously similar to hacking activities that occurred during the U.S. Presidential election. According to a report issued in April by cyber security researchers, the hack targeting Macron’s campaign used methods similar to the suspected Russian hacks of the Democratic National Committee last year in United States. It was still not clear who was the mastermind behind the document dump. This time, Macron is leading against his challenger Marine Le Pen. Recent polling indicates that Macron is leading Le Pen by more than 25 points, specifically attracting 63 percent of the vote over Le Pen’s 37 percent.